Yesterday I wrote about why I’m abandoning outreach events and gave several reasons why “outreach campaigns” may be a more effective solution.

For several months now I’ve been planning an outreach campaign for my own youth group and am excited to have other youth groups join us! The best part is that it’s completely FREE! We’ll be going all over the world, sharing the gospel with friends both in our local neighborhoods and friends far away. It’s an online missions trip, a “missions trip to Facebook,” if you will.

The Internet has never made it so easy to share Christ with those all over the world! Teenagers spend a crazy amount of hours talking with friends on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, World of Warcraft and other such social hangouts online about things that don’t really matter in light of eternity, let’s train them to share their faith and push them to do it online. The Online Missions Trip is a 2-week campaign to empower them to use social media to share Christ with their friends who don’t yet know Him.

The structure looks like this:

January whatever-31, 2009

Pre-trip training. Use youth group meetings to train kids how to share their faith, think through the Online Missions Trip concept, and start praying for unsaved friends.

February 1-14, 2009

Online Missions Trip! During these two weeks teens and youth leaders are engaging in spiritual conversations with unsaved friends online. They’re uploading videos, photos, posting links, using status updates to share what God’s doing in their lives, writing notes, sending messages, posting on blogs, creating event invites to youth group, and anything else that will bring God up in a conversation that starts online and hopefully spreads to a face-to-face discussion.

February 15-whenever, 2009

Outreach event/series and new-believer follow-up starts. Follow-up on this missions trip with a series that helps the new teens in your ministry either investigate Christianity a bit closer or start growing in their new faith. Be sure to follow-up one-on-one with new converts, as well.

To learn more about this trip, visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com. There are many ideas, free resources and tools, a 24/7 Prayer Room, a Facebook app you can use, and more. It also has a video of me explaining the trip in more detail.

While you’re there, join the OnlineMissionsTrip.com Facebook Group and meet some of the other teens and youth leaders who will be attending this missions trip with you in February.

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Thanks to YouthBytes, Dare 2 Share Ministries, and Xtreme Youth Alliance for their support, promotion, and free resources for the Online Missions Trip! Thank you Brian Ford and Michael Rothermel for all your help in creating content and tools for this missions trip that will bring teenagers to Christ! And thanks Janelle Painter for designing the Online Mission Trip logo!

For many churches and youth groups, the typical approach to evangelism is to host a big event that will be attractive to unbelievers who are invited by their Christian friends. A little over a year ago I wrote a blog post about my problem with outreach events like this. Back then I didn’t really have any answers for my frustrations, but now I do. I’ve officially decided to ditch outreach events altogether for a couple of reasons.

1. They end up being “Christian entertainment.”

Regardless of how much I push an outreach lock-in, publicize it, and encourage kids to bring their unsaved friends, it’s rare that students actually do so. Out of 20 kids, maybe 1 or 2 of them are unchurched. The rest are all youth group kids or Christian kids from other youth groups.

2. Low conversion rate.

If there actually are any pre-saved teens there, the percentage of those who give their lives to Christ seems to be pretty low. Maybe because it feels intimidating, maybe because there’s no interaction or avenue for asking questions, or maybe because they have no relationship with the person who is presenting the gospel.

3. Teens’ evangelism becomes dependent on an adult leader.

Most importantly, I feel like I’m doing a disservice to my teens by unintentionally teaching them to outsource their evangelism efforts to someone on a stage. What happens when they grow into adults and still feel that evangelism is the church’s job?

A better approach

Instead, I’m forming what I call “outreach campaigns.” An outreach campaign is when teens are trained and held accountable to share their faith with their friends on an on-going basis. If teens start doing this at a young age, they’ll have the confidence to continue it for the rest of their lives. Otherwise, they might always rely on the church to get their unbelieving friends onto Christian turff where someone else will talk to them about Christ instead.

If teens develop the confidence and experience of sharing Christ with their friends outside the church, the conversion rate will be much higher than events. For the unbeliever, the feeling of being outnumbered and intimidated by a Christian group disappears, ongoing interaction and questions is natural, and a relationship with the trusted friend is obviously already established.

For several months now I’ve been working hard to put together such an outreach campaign, not only for my own group, but for anyone else who wants to participate in it with us. Stay tuned tomorrow for how you can join my youth group on a FREE missions trip!

(A couple weeks ago in our LIVE YM Talk we discussed the question, “Are youth events still working?” Some of what I mentioned here I talked about in more depth during that conversation. Listen to it here.)